


but we were in screaming colour

by myillusionsgone



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Alternate Universe - Actors, Alternate Universe - Bookstore, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-08
Updated: 2014-12-08
Packaged: 2018-02-28 16:37:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2739488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myillusionsgone/pseuds/myillusionsgone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Out of my league, old school chic. Like a movie star from the silver screen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but we were in screaming colour

Rosengarten Books was a small, family-owned store, located in the artist quarter of Magnolia. Usually, it was Lyon Vastia’s foster mother who worked there along with a few employees, selling rare books and finding them for customers. But Lyon and his younger brother had told her that after nearly ten years, it was time for Ur to take a vacation. And so rather than to dedicate his time to the noble causes he usually worked on, he spent his days in his mother’s bookstore. On the one hand, he had lots of time to actually read, something he had not been doing for an embarrassingly long time. But on the other hand, he had to deal with dead-eyed teenagers who came in to ask him after the most obscure books, books his mother would never willingly sell because they were just horrible. His brother who was helping out had finally decided to just collect the most terrible books on a table in the back of the store, pin a note ‘books for hipsters’ onto the stack before going back to glaring at anyone who got too close to the wobbly desk where he was writing his term paper.

“You know,” Gray said as he looked up from his laptop, a pen stuck behind his ear, “I start to understand why our dearest parents are still married – this place is like some oasis.”

Lyon did roll his eyes at this because he had always been the one to tell Gray that it had to be the store that had kept their parents together for such a long time. Their father was a lawyer with sharp wits and an even sharper tongue and their mother had inherited the bookstore from her grandmother and so rather than to spend all her time at the hospital where she worked as a surgeon, she spent hours weekly in the dusty little shop and whenever she came home, she was relaxed because aside from the hipsters, there was little that could trouble her.

“Always said so,” Lyon said as he crossed his arms behind his back, scanning the empty store before he yawned. “Today’s kinda slow … makes me wonder why you stuck around.”

“Can’t leave you alone here, mom would murder me,” the younger man said as he looked back at his screen, “but you got a customer coming in, _brother dearest_.”

Whenever Gray called Lyon ‘brother dearest’, the white-haired man worried instantly because in the past twenty years of his life, it had always been the sole warning he received before Gray did something that would have made an amazing motif for Lyon to murder him.

But before Lyon could remind Gray that with Ultear on some humanitarian mission and their parents on a long overdue vacation, he was in charge, a sunglasses-wearing woman with bright pink hair had stopped at the counter. “Yo,” he greeted nonchalantly before he heard Gray’s snorting laughter and corrected himself with a dramatic sigh. “I mean, welcome to our store. How may I be of assistance?”

The woman raised an eyebrow over the rim of her sunglasses as she briefly looked around. “Um, I ordered some books,” she said after a moment while she kept scanning the room as if she expected his mother to appear out of thin air. “I got to admit, I’m kinda surprised.”

Lyon sighed deeply as he scratched his neck. “Mom is on a vacation,” he explained as he opened the list of books they had ordered for their customers. “So, what’s the name?”

For a moment, the woman appeared to be taken aback by the professionalism he was demonstrating but Lyon was kind of used to this sort of thing. He liked working at the bookstore because it was a rather peaceful job as opposed to the work he did at the office and because he did not want to get fired, he had to play nicely with the others. Most of the time, he had to deal with the pessimistic hipsters who looked at him and informed him that art, true art, was dead and this left him filled with righteous anger half of the time because he could not help but disagree. He was an architect and when he had been in university, he had not just hung out with all kind of artists – mostly because they had thrown the greatest parties – but he had also taken a few classes within the artistic segment to gain a better idea of the world.

And so he had gotten into a fight with one of those dead-eyed teenagers over the question whether or not the great authors of the past would have preferred to live in an age where they could have reached their readers so much easier. Needless to say, there was no winning fights against people who were set on damming everything to hell – although the fight had probably entertained Gray more than anything else.

“Um, I’m Evelyn Gold,” the pink-haired woman said as she smiled nervously at him, tapping her forefinger against the sunglasses she was wearing. “I ordered mostly books about art.”

“Well, that’s what our shop specialises in,” he said as he memorised the name and mentioned to the door behind him. “I’m gonna check if your books are here already – Gray, behave.”

It was necessary to remind his brother of this because Gray was sometimes a bit too much like their father – and although the younger Fullbuster was not quite as much of a flirt as Silver, it was still enough to get him into trouble every once in a while.

“I’m gonna be an angel for Miss Gold,” Gray said as he kept staring as his screen. “Have fun.”

Yes, indeed. The Fullbuster genes were strong in that idiot, Lyon decided as he stepped into the little office where his mother would do the accounting and where they kept the books they had ordered for their customers. It did not take long for him to track down the right books and to return where his brother and the customer had started a serious staring contest.

“Miss Gold,” Lyon said calmly, regaining the woman’s attention. “I got your books.”

“Thank you,” she said calmly as she stepped back to the counter, pale fingers toying around with the buttons of her coat. “What do I owe your store?”

She was certainly one of the elusive kind but while Lyon was pretty sure that her name was not the one she had given him, he was oddly convinced that she had a damn good reason for not telling him, that she was making a secret out of it for a reason – and that his mother knew this reason and understood it. He remembered the long winter evenings when he had been a child and his parents had told him the long – and sometimes weird – story about how they had met, how they had fallen in love. He remembered rolling his eyes at them because for the longest time, he had figured that the whole ‘tracked her down at the train station when she wanted to leave’ story was some cover-up for the less interesting truth.

The point was: his family knew how to handle secrets and so he had grown up with the understanding that sometimes, there was no way to tell someone the truth. Therefore, he did not mind it that she had lied to him about her name – because whatever her real name was, she had probably reasons not to use it.

“Well, looks like you got lucky,” Lyon said as he scanned the note pinned to the books. “Most of the books were on sale. So they’ll be all yours for hundred-nine jewels.”

She smiled as she rummaged around in her bag and got out a handful of crumpled jewel notes. “Keep the change,” she said with a smile before she grabbed her books and threw Gray a nasty glare before she twirled out of the store, a trace of expensive perfume lingering on.

“She likes you,” Gray remarked from where he was smirking at his laptop. “Mom was so right.”

Lyon did not bother to remind his silly younger brother that their mother was usually right about everything because that would be plain silly and actually rather pathetic. Yes, Doctor Ur Lund – too proud to ever surrender her maiden name, of course – was hardly the kind of mother who would be caught matchmaking her children but Lyon had seen the way she had kept gently nudging Ultear into the direction of the young surgeon who had been working with her at the hospital and before long, his sister had given in and had started to date Jellal Fernandes which had marked a happy day for most of them.

(Aside from their father who had mourned the loss of his princess to ‘some rascal’ which had caused Ur to laugh at him before she had reminded him that he had once been one as well.)

“I doubt it,” Lyon said as he started to sort out the money, a frown on his face. “You know her?”

“Well, she’s one of mom’s favourite customers,” the black-haired brat smirked as he kept merrily typing away on his laptop. “And well, you probably caught her lie, didn’t ya?”

“Of course I did,” he said drily as he raised an eyebrow. “Lemme guess – artist? Actual artist, not one of those hipster teenagers with their dead eyes, correct?”

He doubted that someone with bubblegum pink hair and a slight bounce in her steps could be one of the disappointed-with-everything-and-more people he had to deal with whenever he took over at the bookstore for a few days. No, the stranger had some kind of spark inside of her, one that made it difficult for him to just end the conversation with Gray at this point.

“Actress, actually,” Gray said he kept smirking before he flung something at Lyon. “One of the kind you think are attractive but mostly on an artistic level.”

Lyon did not answer as he unfolded the paper, finding a phone number with a hastily scribbled name and a rather dorky sketch of what was probably supposed to be a smiling face. “Blendy?” he asked as he looked at his brother with a frown on his face while a part of him wanted to kick himself for not making the connection between the bright pink hair and the name of the character the woman had last played.

“Like I said, mom really likes to meddle around,” Gray smirked. “You _will_ call her, no?”

Lyon did not answer.


End file.
